


Sundays at Nine

by lily_lovely



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/F, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-07
Updated: 2009-02-07
Packaged: 2017-10-03 03:22:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lily_lovely/pseuds/lily_lovely
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the spell in "Chosen", what's going to happen with the Slayer and the goddess?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sundays at Nine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [snowpuppies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowpuppies/gifts).



One of the first things she saw in Kennedy was her strength.

Not physical, although she was plenty fit even before she became a Slayer. It was her never-ending confidence, her persistence in trying to convince Willow to date her, her determination to succeed.

Here was someone who was prepared to sweep her off her feet, to do all the work. Someone willing to take care of her.

Which is why she started dating her, even though she still wakes up in the middle of the night crying and hearing Tara say, "Your shirt," in that innocent, caring way.

Some nights, before she started sleeping in the same bed as Kennedy, she would stay up flipping through her photos of Tara, or rummaging despondently through her box of things, still waiting to be picked up.

On those nights, she wondered if she was dating Kennedy to _become_ Tara.

She knows it wouldn't make any sense to most people, and it definitely wouldn't make sense to Buffy or Xander. But she thinks that the way she feels about Kennedy now is the way Tara must have thought of her, when they first met and Tara still wore shapeless sweaters, and had the habit of standing hunched over looking at her feet.

Now she knows what it's like to have someone make you feel like the weight is lifted; it's like she doesn't have to think about her problems because they don't matter anymore.

She looks at Kennedy, and it feels easier to breathe. Just knowing someone is there to help her, to protect her, to keep her safe from the world. From _herself_.

She kind of hates that she needs that now.

She shouldn't need the same looking-after and careful encouragement that a much younger, incredibly shy, mentally and probably physically abused college girl did. Willow's an adult now, and she'd like to think that she doesn't need someone to tilt up her chin and tell her she's special.

But she does, in some ways. If it was years and years of her family telling her she was useless, worthless, and demonic that made Tara need Willow's attention, it's Willow's own recklessness that makes her need Kennedy's.

As she looks through the pictures, carefully taken out of their hiding place in the shoebox under the bed and then spread out on top of it, she sees how Tara grew more confident and sure every month, every week; she sees the point at which she thinks Tara's old family wouldn't have recognized her anymore.

It makes her wonder if it's possible for her to get back what she lost in the same way.

And she wonders, as she sadly puts the photos back, if she ever really had it.

***  
It doesn't hurt that Kennedy calls her sexy or beautiful or something like that at least twice every day. At first she figured it would get old, or seem fake after awhile, or that Kennedy would stop doing it as their relationship went on...

...but Kennedy still says it just as often.

And she still gets that tingly sensation in her stomach paired with a lurchy, jumpy feeling in her heart whenever she hears it.

It just feels so _nice_ to have someone talk to her like that. To feel recognized, appreciated, _chosen_. Not in the sense of a young girl given new power in her fists by someone she's never met; but in the sense of someone meeting her, spending time with her, assessing her, and then deciding that she's worth all the effort and pain and inevitable heartbreak of a relationship.

It also doesn't hurt that Kennedy's amazing in bed, especially after becoming a Slayer. All the things she'd wondered about Buffy--if she was the top, if she liked it a little rough, if she used lots of sex toys--turned out to be...well, not all true. For one thing, Kennedy has a higher propensity to lick and growl than she'd, for her own sanity, like to think Buffy has.

But beyond the obvious stamina issues, there's the new raw sense of power in her movements, like she's a barely-contained animal.

It always makes Willow shiver.

***  
After Sunnydale becomes a hole in the ground, Willow reluctantly goes with Kennedy to the Warehouse in Los Angeles, where the new Slayer organization is based.

The name reminds her of identical and individually packaged plastic goods, waiting to be shipped off to foreign countries. The comparison isn't an entirely bad one, if Slayers are to cheap toys as Buffy and the gang are to poorly-paid sweatshop workers as packaging is to weapons training.

The whole thing makes Willow skittish. Aside from the shiny cellophane feel to it all, she doesn't feel ready to get back into the whole fighting-demons thing.

And soon she realizes that she doesn't really need to. After all, the grunt work will be dealt with by the highly organized squads or random freelance Slayers, and what's one shaky Wiccan when there are dozens of capable and highly-trained covens that equal or surpass her, all around the world?

But she doesn't really know what else to do. How can she _not_ be a part of whatever the rest of the Scoobies are doing?

So she spends a few weeks puttering about and helping Xander and Andrew with the paperwork and fire code and weapons aspects of it all, and sometimes going on searches for rare demonic texts with Giles. Kennedy heads up a squad thanks to her Sunnydale Potential status, and for awhile it feels...if not right, then something close to it.

After all, who is Willow if she isn't fighting demons with the gang?

But after a few weeks the operation is settled enough that the only way she could really help is with magic. She'd see Giles marching purposefully down the hallway towards her, ready to ask her to do some sort of locater or teleportation spell, and she'd duck around the corner, running into someone's office and asking them in a hysterically high-pitched voice if they needed coffee, or a sandwich, or even some extra paper clips.

She doesn't really know why she's so wary of doing magic again. After all, she'd performed the biggest spell of her life barely a month ago, and it had turned out fine; didn't that prove she's ready for it?

But even though she doesn't know why, she does know for sure that she's _not ready_. It's not something she could explain to the others, but it's how she feels.

After a little poking around, she figures out that anything she could do could be done almost as well by any of the up-and-coming mystics they'd brought in, or by outsourcing the job to one of the covens that had agreed to work for them--occasionally--from wherever they're based. And there are at least twelve other girls who could take Kennedy's place leading the squad, five of them also Sunnydale Potentials.

So after another week of avoiding Giles, and biting her nails, and practicing her speech in front of the mirror, she tentatively asks Kennedy if she would consider going freelance and moving somewhere else, preferably out of the country.

Kennedy says she has to think it over, but an hour later she says she'll do it.

After packing her bags and arranging a flight to England, she finally has to tell the gang. Kennedy can't be there, since she's out arranging for Vi to take over her squad. In some ways it's a good thing, because none of them really liked Kennedy that much, but Willow still wishes she didn't have to face them alone.

And she marvels that it's come to that: being afraid to talk to her best friends.

She finds Buffy in her office, talking heatedly into a headset, presumably to one of the out-of-country squad leaders. She looks up and sees Willow before she can slink away, though, and waves her in.

"Just hang in until the Barcelona team can get there, okay? Can you do that? Okay, great. Call back if it gets hairy, and link up with Susan. She's the head of that team. At--are you getting this down?--K907-P53. The password is 'The Suzeter'. Not very original, I know." Buffy pauses, then laughs at something the other girl said. "Yeah, well, don't get killed, okay? Bye."

Buffy unclips the headset, dangling it through her fingers, and turns in her leather chair to smile at Willow. "Sorry. You know how it is around here. What's up?"

"Uh...listen, Buffy, I think I'm...I'm not going to be part of the gang anymore. I need to figure things out somewhere that's...not here."

"What about Kennedy?"

Willow doesn't expect this. She's prepared herself for arguments, for shouting, for pleading and begging and crying, but she never thought there would just be simple acceptance.

She thinks she should be pleased that there won't be any trouble, but mostly she feels disappointed.

"Ah--Vi's going to take over her squad. We'll be going to England."

Buffy smiles absently, already turning a little in her chair to signify that in a few seconds she's going to be back on her headset. "Don't forget to write."

***  
From Giles, she just gets a strange look, and the quiet words, "Of course, Willow. Do what you feel you must."

She finds herself going to Andrew's office instead of Xander's; she wants to pretend for a few more minutes that at least one of her best friends will be upset that she's leaving.

Andrew gives her his Storm Trooper Limited Edition figurine, accompanied by the solemn request that she take very good care of it. She laughs and rolls her eyes at him, but finds herself slipping it into a plastic bag and then carefully cushioning it between layers of clothes in her luggage.

After all, it's the sweetest send-off she's had so far.

Finally she creeps over to Xander's office. She sees him giving some sort of pep talk to one of the Slayers, which luckily ends quickly with a "Go get 'em" after a few awkward minutes of waiting outside the door.

"Xander, I thought you should know that Kennedy and I are leaving. Uh, for England. For awhile."

And here she gets the reaction she was expecting: "What? You can't do that. We need you here!"

She laughs shakily. "Apparently not. Buffy and Giles didn't really seem to care."

Willow takes a huge gulp of air, suddenly feeling like it's hard to breathe. "I just need to figure some things out. I'll probably be back, but...I don't really know when."

Xander opens his mouth to protest, but closes it in resignation. He gets up and hugs her instead. "You'll call once a week, okay? On, um...say, Sundays at nine?"

She hugs him back, crying a little against his shoulder and hoping he won't notice the tear stains afterwards. "Right! Sundays at nine."

They pull apart, and she gives him a watery smile before dashing away, mumbling something about the taxi.

Soon she's on an airplane with Kennedy, staring out the window as she leaves the only real, I-hurt-if-you-hurt, tell-me-about-your-day, we'll-get-through-it-together family she's ever known.

It doesn't feel as freeing as she'd thought it would.

***  
Willow becomes a teaching assistant to an English professor at Goldsmiths, University of London; even though she never finished college, they decide to give her a TA position after a look at her test scores, a few English 101 papers on Shakespeare, and Giles' official Watchers' Council recommendation.

It feels nice, to rely on a skill that she knows won't end in crazed no-hands driving and trying to kill people. Well, as long as she doesn't have to read another paragraph with "it's" instead of "its" and "you're" for "your".

They develop a rhythm. Willow gets up early to eat and take a long shower, and Kennedy gets up an hour later, in time to kiss her good-bye. Willow goes to the college on the Tube, eats lunch at the café on Pembridge, and grades papers when she isn't in the classroom.

Kennedy, if not at the gym or on a fifty-mile run, goes on patrols and works as one of the Slayer liaisons to the new Council, conveniently located two blocks from the Bond Street Tube station.

They're both home by seven at the latest, and they eat dinner together and talk about their day. Then they read or watch television together until they can have sex without bothering the people in the downstairs apartment.

Kennedy always goes to sleep first. In the beginning, Willow didn't mind; she'd just curl up to her girlfriend and let her slow breathing and steady heartbeat send her away into sleep. Or she'd stare at her face, smiling softly, wondering how she got to be so lucky.

But soon there are more nights where she's just irritated that Kennedy won't even make the effort to stay up with her, and she rolls over to fall asleep with clenched teeth and a wrinkled brow.

Or, more often, she lies awake feeling lonely and depressed, and somewhat empty. Her new life has completely cut her off from everyone she knows except Xander, and she only gets him for an hour on Sundays at nine.

He rambles about how the squads are doing, and recounts information about Kennedy's old squad to pass on to her. He gives detailed and admittedly comic descriptions of the unusual demons they killed, or the things Andrew told the girls that day.

At first she tells him about her students and their various failings in textual analysis, or she gives him all the dirt Kennedy got from the other Slayer liaisons to the Council. But eventually she just lets him talk, because she doesn't have anything to say.

Each time she calls, it feels like the distance between LA and London grows about another fifty miles. The calls get more and more sparsely detailed, and are more often than not cut short by some perilous life-or-death crisis, accompanied by the casually-attached phrase, "Sorry, Will, you know how it is."

It all gives Willow more reasons to lie awake at night and wish things could just be _different_.

And on the worst nights, she goes into the trunk under the bed, and pulls out the top compartment full of weapons to reveal the spell ingredients she's tucked away.

She lovingly fingers the fire of Azrael incense--love spells; the tiny bottle of commanding oil--mind control; the pouch of shiny blue bloodstones--forgetting spells; the jar of rose water--positive energy. She imagines how she could use them: to make her friends care about her again, to make Kennedy love her more, to make everything _right_.

Then something stops her, and she quickly closes the trunk and gets back into bed, shaking with fear.

Because she has this feeling that one day, _nothing_ will stop her.

***  
Willow wakes up one morning and realizes that today's the day that all the queasy-bad feelings building up inside her have finally burst.

The world feels too tight around her. She feels like she can't move, like she should be trying to thrash her limbs to get away from...this. This _feeling_.

Everything about Kennedy just doesn't seem right. The way her arms fall around her waist, the feel of her hands, the smell of her sweat.

She'd thought she wanted to become Tara, but now all she wants is to be _with_ Tara.

And she can't help thinking that she's being terribly unfair to Kennedy. Being with her, when all Willow wants is...stability? Comfort? Attention?

Whatever she wants, it's not what she's supposed to want. It's not how she's supposed to feel about the woman who's supposed to be her Amazon, her everything.

But it's not how she feels, and it's not who Kennedy is.

And one day, after she's spent half an hour screaming her throat raw and sobbing into her bunched-up sweater, after she's called Xander for hours, too scared to leave a message but desperately hoping he'd finally pick up, she decides she's had it.

She's done using people, she's done feeling this way, she's done living this life that just doesn't fit.

As she's preparing her things in the morning, she hastily stuffs her wallet and some clothes into her bag along with the graded papers.

And instead of going home after work, she just _leaves_.

She feels freer than she has in a long time. She could do anything. There are no rules, no restrictions. Nothing to hold her back.

She gets a new cell phone, ditching her old one after Kennedy keeps calling it. She changes email addresses (her old one now flooded with increasingly panicked messages from Kennedy), moves to a cheap flat on the other side of the city and takes a job at an occult shop near her building.

She marvels at how easy it is to just disappear. She didn't have to have a break-up fight, or deal with any of the painful emotions that normally go along with the ending of a relationship.

Just...poof. Gone. No responsibility, no trouble at all.

***  
And for a few months she revels in the euphoria of not having to deal. She's away from everyone she knows now, but it feels less like detachment and more like she's reclaiming something. A lost part of herself that she's never gotten to explore.

Each day she rings up purchases at The Mystic Moon, mentally calculating how she could use each item she's selling, what she could _do_ with it. And it's almost as good as doing the spells themselves.

But soon it's not enough. Her life starts to feel hollow again. Whenever she's with one of the girls she's picked up at the local lesbian bar, she wishes they'd do that thing Kennedy does with her tongue, or that their hands would have the same roughness.

They call her "baby", and all she can do is wish it was Kennedy's voice. She wonders what that means, but pushes the feeling away.

This is what she really wants, after all.

She starts doing little spells on the customers. Just on long days, when she's been standing up in four-inch heels for five hours straight and her back is aching and she has a headache from all the pings of the cash register.

She'll make them smile a little more at her, or pay her compliments. Nothing racy, nothing that affects the grand scheme of things.

After all, she's learned her lesson.

But somehow, the shop owner, Diana, notices. One day after they're done cleaning up, she gives Willow a _look_ that makes her shudder a little.

Diana softens it with a smile. "Love, you're dodging the real problem by being here. Now I don't know what it is, but you didn't come here for the joys of working the till, right?"

And then she leans in towards Willow's face, looking directly into her eyes in a way that makes Willow more than slightly uncomfortable. "Go back home, yeah? This is bad for you."

Willow babbles an incoherent reply and rushes out of the door, just trying to get away. But walking back to her flat, she thinks about it: is she really happy here?

What if she was meant to be with Kennedy all along?

And once she's sitting at her kitchen table over a steaming cup of tea, she considers the possibility that she's had it all wrong. That all this running away and trying to reinvent herself and cutting herself off from the people she knows is just making her nuttier.

She hates that she might have gotten it wrong, when she'd really thought she'd _finally_ gotten it right.

***  
She takes the Tube down to Bayswater, the stop by their--well, Kennedy's place, now. She knows it's a stupid thing to do, even as she walks up the flight of stairs to the door. But she can't help but try.

She puts her old key in, and of course it doesn't fit. She isn't sure what she'd expected to happen when she brought it with her, but it still stings of betrayal.

When she knocks, some strange girl answers the door. Willow notices, through a daze, that she's impossibly pretty. Certainly prettier than her.

She babbles a "wrong address" excuse and scurries away, shame burning at her cheeks. Obviously Kennedy had moved on. Willow had up and abandoned her, after all. Hadn't even bothered to break up with her or talk it over like a decent person would.

But the next day she finds herself taking the Tube down there again, at a different time in hopes that the other girl wouldn't be there.

"Coming!" she hears Kennedy shout. And that only makes her more nervous; now it's real, now she's really doing this, now she can't run away again.

When Kennedy opens the door, she sees everything she's lost, everything she'd forgotten or missed. The easy smile, the bright, bubbly energy.

It fades as soon as she recognizes Willow. "What are you doing here?" she asks dully. "Have you come for your things?"

"N-no, I was hoping we could...talk." As soon as Willow says it, she realizes how stupid it sounds, how much this isn't going to work.

Kennedy cocks her hip and tightens her jaw in the way that means she's trying to control her anger. "You want _me_ to forgive _you_? You want me to take you back after you ditched me without a word?"

Willow almost thinks she sees tears in Kennedy's eyes, but it could just be the sun.

It's a beautiful day out. How can it still be a beautiful day out? "I-I guess so. Look, I really didn't mean to hurt you, I just needed some time to--"

"That excuse doesn't work anymore, Willow. If you want to break up, you _tell_ me, and we _talk_ about it. You don't just never come home from work. You don't try to control everything yourself."

She looks up at the ceiling, emitting a short, bitter laugh. "God, Willow, it's just so like you. Wanting everything just the way you like it. Willing to do anything to make sure everyone does things your way."

Kennedy looks at Willow again, eyes full of pain and rage, and it hurts Willow deep inside, knowing that she put it there. "I see now why Tara left you. Her mistake was coming back."

Willow's shocked. She doesn't know what to say, how to make it better.

So she stalls for time. "Okay, I get that. Uh--can I get my things, then?"

Kennedy sighs. "Okay, but you'll have to get them together yourself. I haven't bothered."

Willow hesitantly walks into the apartment. And it's the subtle differences that hit her: a new stain on the floor near the edge of the rug, a pink bra she's never seen before dangling off the edge of a chair, a different bookshelf.

She goes through each room, stiffly gathering her things into a trash bag Kennedy silently hands her. Willow tries to think of something to say.

"What's her name?" she finally asks.

"Talia."

"Does she know that you're a Slayer?"

Kennedy looks down, awkwardly. "No."

Willow looks up from stuffing a green blouse into the bag. "I'm sorry," she blurts out. "I-I understand why you don't want to take me back--but I want you to know that."

Some of the anguish has drained out of Kennedy's face, and she smiles a little, trailing her fingers along the edge of the table. "I've missed you. I mean, I like Talia a lot, but...I don't love her. She's not you."

Willow knows that she won't be able to contain her hopefulness if she keeps looking at Kennedy, so she goes back to pulling clothes out of drawers. "Really?"

"Yeah." She shakes her head. "I don't know why I'm saying this--I thought if you ever came back I'd be cursing your name and throwing stuff at you. I know I made a big show of being angry back there, but mostly it just hurts that you thought you couldn't tell me."

Willow starts to reply, wanting to tell her everything she had been thinking for all these months, but then she realizes that she's gotten all of her things. She slowly ties up the bag, all of her hope replaced by dread and fear. "Um--thanks. For letting me in."

"Wait!" Willow stops, her hand on the doorknob. Kennedy looks at her for a long moment, assessing something.

Willow is suddenly filled with the need to get this test _right_, whatever it is. "Yeah?"

Kennedy's look changes to something a bit brighter. "You remember the café at the corner of Pembridge?" she asks suddenly.

Willow feels another small ray of hope rise within her, and quickly squashes it down.

She can't afford to be hopeful here. "Uh--sure, of course I do. Why?"

"I'll be there Sundays at nine."

Willow can't help it; she's definitely getting hopeful. "What about Talia?"

"I...I don't know. We'll see."

It's enough.

**Author's Note:**

> booster17 wrote a remix of this fic called [Sundays at Nine (Slipping Through Your Fingers Remix)](http://lily-lovely.livejournal.com/18894.html). Totally great and original remix; do go check it out!
> 
> Here's links and some info about my research for the story if anyone's interested:
> 
> Magic
> 
> The properties that I attribute to the spell ingredients were all for the purposes of the story, and I mean no disrespect towards real Wiccans or Pagans. I think we all know that the Wicca of Buffy is very different from the real thing.
> 
> [Fire of Azrael incense](http://www.silverlightsource.com/incense.shtml)
> 
> [Commanding Oil](http://www.silverlightsource.com/herbs_and_oils.shtml)
> 
> [Bloodstones](http://www.wiccanglade.com/bloodstone.html)
> 
> [Rose Water](http://www.wiccanway.com/anna-riva-rose-water-p/wwbatbod029.htm)
> 
> [The Mystic Moon](http://www.themysticmoonshop.com/) is an actual occult shop, but it's in Sherwood, Nottingham, not London. I was just shopping around for a good name, and the Mystic Moon of the story is not meant to be or resemble the real shop at all.
> 
> London
> 
> [Goldsmiths, University of London](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldsmiths,_University_of_London) is a real constituent college of University of London, based in New Cross.
> 
> Wikipedia's map of [the London Underground](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/London_Underground_Zone_1.svg) was very helpful in picking my Tube stations. Both [Bayswater](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayswater_tube_station) and [Bond Street](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bond_Street_tube_station) are real Tube stations.
> 
> Pembridge Square, Pembridge Gardens, Pembridge Place, and Pembridge Road are all streets near Bayswater Tube station, and therefore somewhere near Willow and Kennedy's apartment. I found them using [this handy-dandy interactive map gizmo](http://www.allinlondon.co.uk/mapping/map.php?pc=W2+4QH) that shows where Bayswater Tube station is on a map of London. And no, I have no idea which Pembridge Kennedy was talking about. It just sounded like a pretty name.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Sundays at Nine (Slipping Through Your Fingers Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/72970) by [Booster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Booster/pseuds/Booster)




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